Me3dia tipped me off that the trailer for the new James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, is online:

Is it just me or does this seem like License to Kill redux? In that one, a lousy Timothy Dalton outing that’s distinguished only by the presence of Carey Lowell, the wife of Bond’s CIA friend Felix Leiter is killed and Leiter himself is mauled by sharks (not sure if they had lasers on their heads or not but they were certainly ill-tempered). Bond goes off on a revenge mission, to MI6’s displeasure, his license to kill is revoked, etc. etc.

I’m not hating, just saying. This kind of plot device wasn’t really new when Bond got around to it either, and they’ve managed to freshen up other long-gone-stale aspects of the franchise, so I’ll still see it.

Incidentally, here’s how much solace a quantum provides:

“At the small scales studied in particle physics, energy often occurs in discrete packets or units called quanta. The amount of energy in a quantum depends on the frequency of the radiation carrying the energy; it is equal to the frequency (in hertz) multiplied by Planck’s constant, 6.626 069 x 10-34 joule second (J·s). The word “quantum” is also used in other contexts where physical quantities occur as multiples of a discrete unit. For example, the quantum of electric charge is e, the charge on a single electron. Via

Wikipedia puts it much more simply (as it often does): “The smallest possible, and therefore indivisible, unit of a given quantity or quantifiable phenomenon.”

Which would have been a worse title: Multiples of a Discrete Unit of Solace or The Smallest Possible, and Therefore Indivisible, Unit of Solace? Also, doesn’t the last one sound like one of those movie titles translated from the Chinese?